Hispanic rights leader Obledo dies at 78

Obituary: Mario Obledo, who rose from selling newspapers in downtown San Antonio as a boy to steering the Chicano civil rights movement at its peak, died Wednesday in Sacramento, Calif.

Published 9:53 pm, Monday, August 23, 2010

Mario Obledo, who rose from selling newspapers in downtown San Antonio as a boy to steering the Chicano civil rights movement at its peak, died Wednesday in Sacramento, Calif.

Obledo co-founded the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, among others. In 1982, he ran unsuccessfully for governor of California.

Obledo died of a massive heart attack. He had suffered complications of diabetes in recent years, and both of his legs had been amputated. He was 78.

"Mario had a huge impact on San Antonio history," former Mayor Henry Cisneros said. "But few San Antonians fully appreciate the impact that he had nationally."

"If you want to make a difference, you do things that will reach beyond your time," he said. "Mario Obledo's co-founding of MALDEF is the kind of impact that will be felt almost into perpetuity."

State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte said Obledo's death was a personal and public loss. She said the "icon of the Latino community" wrote her a letter of recommendation to get her into pharmacy school.

Obledo was former California Gov. Jerry Brown's secretary of health and welfare and the president of the League of United Latin American Citizens. He received the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from President Bill Clinton in 1998 and the Ohtli Award from Mexico in 1985. That award is presented to U.S. citizens of Mexican descent for public service.

Obledo was born to immigrants who arrived in San Antonio after the Mexican Revolution. His father died when he was 5, Roth said, leaving his mother, Concepción Guerra Obledo, to raise 12 children alone. He was the ninth child.

The older children held jobs while going to school, and even the youngest found ways to help out. Obledo sold newspapers and shined shoes downtown. Later, he hung around Baptist Hospital's pharmacy, showing early interest in the profession.

His sister Gode Roth said that while their beginnings were humble, "no one slept on the floor," as a major newspaper reported last week.

In fact, a village came to his mother's side.

"We had an aunt who was very good about helping us," said Roth, who also credited San Antonio businessman Roy Akers, among others, with helping the family.

"He was everything to us," she said. "He was very important in our growing up."

The Akers family even sought to adopt a couple of the boys, but her mother wouldn't have it.

Roth said her mother's unrelenting focus on education and language skills pushed the Obledo children to succeed.

"We had a picket fence. She said, 'Inside the fence, you speak Spanish to me,'" Roth said. But her mother insisted that outside the fence, her children speak English.

All 12 graduated from Fox Tech, Roth said.

When Obledo came to Minneapolis in summer 1947 to visit Roth, then at the University of Minnesota, "there were signs of him wanting to do something big."

Mario Obledo enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin in 1949. After a stint as a Navy radar technician during the Korean War, he went back to UT in 1955 on the GI Bill. He graduated in 1957.

He worked as a pharmacist while pursuing a law degree at St. Mary's University. He graduated in 1960. By that time, he was married to his first wife, Mary. They had three children.

Obledo was in private practice until the mid-1960s, until he was appointed assistant attorney general of Texas in 1965, serving until 1968.

He was MALDEF's first general counsel and later its president, working to improve Hispanics' political representation and access to education.

Roth said her brother was driven by the poverty and injustice he saw around him.

"He was a humanist," said Rosa Rosales, past president of LULAC. "He worked for the well-being of Latino communities and all communities."

Obledo left MALDEF in 1973 to teach at Harvard Law School before being tapped by Brown as secretary of health and welfare. He left that post in 1981.

"He was a very down-to-earth person," said activist Rosie Castro. "There was no pretense. Even though he had reached great heights and had so many accomplishments, he was still Mario."

"Texas was still in his heart," said his son Mario Obledo Jr.

"The impressive thing about him was he was on the level, upfront. He didn't play games," said Mario Compean, a founder of the Raza Unida Party.

"He was a beautiful guy," said former state Sen. Joe Bernal. "He was very sensitive about people's problems."

A memorial in San Antonio is being planned, his son said. His funeral Mass in Sacramento will be Friday.

"Though MALDEF is now headquartered in Los Angeles, its roots came out of the hotbed of San Antonio's civil rights politics in the 1960s," Cisneros said. "Mario Obledo was right at the center of it. The Latino community owes him, and the nation owes him."